Gougères – French Cheese Puffs

Gougères - French Cheese Puffs

Gougères – French Cheese Puffs

Gougères are classic French cheese puffs made with choux pastry and grated cheese (Gruyère / Comté). French they may be but it was in Russia that I really took a liking to them.

I blame it on the French bakery Volkonsky‘s, which was in dangerous proximity to Katya’s Moscow appt. A small bakery / café selling delicious pastries, sandwiches, breads and coffee not to mention gougères.

It was a lesson in how something so innocent can be so addictive … I could have eaten them by the handful.

In memory of  Volkonsky’s gougères, here is  my recipe (see link Gougères below):

Gougères – French Cheese Puffs Recipe : ERIKA ALLISTON – Sweet Pea Blog

• 250 mL cold water
• 75 gr unsalted butter (in small cubes)
• 3 pinches salt
• 150 gr white flour (sifted)
• 4 eggs
• 80 gr Gruyère cheese (finely grated)
• grated nutmeg to taste

Chou Pastry – Method:

1. Place water, butter & salt in a sauce pan. Heat till just boiling.
2. Remove from heat.
3. Add flour all at once. Using a wooden spoon, stir vigorously untill a smooth dough forms (see photo)
4. Let cool for 5 minutes.
5. Add 1 egg, mix well. Don’t panic, it will take a few minutes of vigorous stirring for the egg to fully mix in. At the beginning the dough will separate and look lumpy, just keep stirring!
6. Repeat step 5 for remaining three eggs, adding them one by one.
7. Now fold in the grated cheese & nutmeg.

Baking – Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C (normal not convection heat)
2. Using a teaspoon, place generous dollops of dough on a lined baking sheet (see photo), leaving 2cm  / 1 inch between them. *
3. Bake for 18-20 minutes.
4. Let cook and serve immediately. You can keep and reheat the gougères but they will lose their perfect consistency

NOTE : other recipes suggest chilling the dough before baking ie. 30-60 minutes in the fridge. I tired this and felt that it didn’t make a large difference, except that when cooked my gougères were slightly paler in colour  and softer in texture.